ABSTRACT
On a quiet day in September 2010, in the small mountainside community of Hangberg, the City of Cape Town’s anti-land invasion unit arrived to demolish shacks that had been erected on Sentinel Mountain. An eviction order had been issued to dismantle nominally ‘unoccupied’ shacks as they were illegally built on a firebreak. Residents of Hangberg, however, described how many of the shacks were occupied, and filled with furniture and personal items. A group of residents gathered to block the land invasion unit, and in response, the City then called in the police. Within hours, the Hangberg area had become a battleground, with dozens of residents resisting police invasion, often while young children looked on. The running battles lasted for several hours with police firing rubber bullets and residents retaliating by throwing rocks and homemade petrol bombs (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2). There were serious injuries on both sides; three Hangberg residents each lost an eye due to police bullets. Beyond the physical injuries, this was a community left traumatised, shocked that their city would deploy police against them when in their view they were simply protecting their homes (Kaganof & Valley 2010).
